Letters: No mandate for excessive cuts

MANY residents will understand Councillor Stephen Greenhalgh's desire to cut the council's debt, but will surely question why this is manifesting itself now (Jobs and bowling greens to go as council reveals £27m cuts programme, January 12).

MANY residents will understand Councillor Stephen Greenhalgh's desire to cut the council's debt, but will surely question why this is manifesting itself now (Jobs and bowling greens to go as council reveals £27m cuts programme, January 12).

Fiscal responsibility means reducing debt in the good times so that funds are available to maintain services in the bad times. Labour ignored this when they

were in power, spending like mad while ignoring the deficit. When the Tories took over the council in 2006, they also ignored fiscal responsibility: running down reserves to pay for a council tax 'bribe' at the last election, despite knowing we faced deep cuts from central funding this year and a council tax freeze. Now all residents, and particularly the most vulnerable, will have to pay for their irresponsibility.

Of course, an alternative explanation is that the Tories have been planning to cut council services all along, as part of their wider privatisation agenda.

Despite their artificial majority on the council, the Tories lack a popular mandate for this policy, firstly because they failed properly to disclose these plans to the electorate, and secondly because they won the votes of fewer than half our residents.

The Liberal Democrats accept the need to reduce the enormous UK public deficit, as part of a coalition government acting in the national interest; but we strongly oppose the ideologically motivated cuts in local services proposed by this unaccountable and self-interested administration.